New CDs

Published 5:47 pm, Wednesday, February 19, 2014

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Phantogram "Voices"

Phantogram "Voices"

New CDs

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Lake Street Dive — "Bad Self Portraits": The originally Boston-based band Lake Street Dive (now headquartered in Brooklyn) is poised for the big time. After attracting 1.2 million hits on YouTube for a sidewalk rendition video cover of the Jackson 5's "I Want You Back," recorded in 2012, the band's star track has ascended rapidly. Not only is the band now playing the likes of Carnegie Hall, they also appeared last year as part of an all-star concert to promote the Coen Brothers' film "Inside Llewyn Davis."

Phantogram — "Voices": There's a fairly common trope dominating parts of the indie music world and it goes like this: Pixie-voiced female leads a band surrounded by male orchestrated electronics. There are even mutated versions of this theme: the twisted insanity of Crystal Castles and the one-woman pop machine that is Grimes. But if there's one outfit ready to flip this trope on its head it's Phantogram. With their newest album, the New York-based duo has turned from a promising indie-rock group into a full-fledged, ass-kicking, genre-mashing superhero team.

Angel Olsen — "Burn Your Fire for No Witness": Olsen doesn't repeat the formula with "Burn Your Fire For No Witness." Instead, she spends this excellent album distorting and blowing out those folk textures, sometimes with control of aural space, sometimes with thick and tangled musical arrangements. The breadth of sounds here now matches the hairpin turns her voice can take, and these songs take full advantage of these new musical roads.

Guided By Voices — "Motivational Jumpsuit": This becomes the most fitful and impatient and exciting album since the "classic" Guided By Voices lineup returned. It subtly shifts away from the order of the past few records and into territory that is hardly new but feels fresh. Pollard knocks out quick pop gems and Tobin Sprout once again succeeds as his gauzy pop counterpart. It's a set that feels less obligated to be lo-fi than "Let's Go Eat the Factory," less willfully strange than "English Little League," and finds its cohesion in forgetting all about being cohesive.